nobodysprefect

[quote name='Jase' post='158723' date='Mar 17 2008, 02:30 AM']Pah! all you talented people make me sick I'd really love to be able to play drums or maybe piano, singing would be great too. I really admire players who can play, study or adapt to more than one instrument. [/quote] I think it's more a question of time to invest in learning another skill. A bit of economics, if I may commandeer the bandwidth: Let us assume (note that economics is pretty much equivalent to trying to reach a point abstracted to uselessness via climbing imaginary ladders) that a person's musical skills can be represented as the function of time spent on practising (a scary assumption, that. I gotta PRACTICE to get better? Man, what a drag) and the function can be approximated to something like f(x) == your musical skills, f'(x) == xa^c/x where a == an individual's inherent talent, c == constant and x == time practiced. Note f'(x) is then the advancement you see for a given chunk of practice. (your marginal benefit) Now it is trivial to note the diminishing returns and that at some point where x >> c (say, if c == 1 x == 1000) the marginal improvement is hardly noticeable. In real world you'd need to account for things like 1) it's really sticking to practicing that counts, you can't make a single huge time investment and get to super skills 2) your skills detoriorate with inuse 3) the approximation is way off but the take-home lesson we can extract is this: as you need to sleep and eat (perhaps also work) you can't get infinitely good. Steve Vai used to practice for 12 hours a day at one time! Many individuals find that as the years go by and their dissatisfaction at their lack of skill diminishes in relation to their hours available for practice and desire to learn another instrument that it's rational to start learning another instrument. Keeps you fresh, to boot!

Nice to see so many peeps sharing their dark secrets, eh? =) I'd have to add the bit about improving communication between players of different instruments to the list. It's pretty hard to say what you'd like someone to try by referrring to such and such record, 'only play it with a bit more of a latin feel.' Guitar's pretty well represented, and with reason - it's one of the easier and readily available instruments, I'd wager. Heckuva lot easier to adequately *accompany* a bit of singing with the guitar than with the piano - definitely harder still with the bass or the wind instruments. (there's an artist I regularly back who might at the drop of a hat decide he wants me to do the chordal accompanying on the bass. fun times! It's my own fault for letting on I could play chords on the thing. Stupid noodling on the breaks dammit!) [quote name='OutToPlayJazz' post='158614' date='Mar 16 2008, 11:37 PM']I really admire anyone who can play wind/brass instruments. Tried both trumpet & flute in the last couple of years and failed miserably![/quote] This. I've played with classical wind players who could actually play in tune* while burning on the horn (did that sound dirty? It did to me, a little) and it was humbling. Some of those guys have the best ears! All I could muster when I gave the trumpet a try was a few sorry bleats and very, very, sore lips! *also, I've heard there are guitarists who can make their bends in tune! Whoa! That's some heavy duty badness there! Not to mention the rarer than rare vocalist who doesn't go flat all the time. Often spoken of, rarely sighted. Almost never heard. Of course, we get a lot ton of leeway in our intonation given the paucity of upper harmonics in our tone. (with the more traditional swing or bop tone) Then again, this is a double-edged sword, as hearing your own in-or-out-of-tuneness can be a pain if the band is playing too loud. Very annoying. (In-ears for the win?)

I've been learning a little guitar lately (and boy, has it REALLY taken the shine off of guitarists...) and I used to play piano as a kid. So: which instruments do you play in addition to bass (or is bass your secondary instrument) and how has it shaped your conceptualization of music and or bass technique and roles in music? Is there a secondary instrument that'd be really useful for a bassist (piano, methinks) - either in that it's easier to write music on or that it's easier to much around theory bits or perhaps it's a good addition to your live performance? I'm having hard time thinking up an instrument that'd be helpful to learn if you wanted to use it to enchance a performance where you also had the bass gig. Much easier to do on, say, keys and another instrument. We just don't get to say:'Well, I'll play bass on intro and verse then switch to didgeridoo for choruses.' Perhaps a tapping specialty instrument? For learning theory and writing music I'm having hard time thinking of anything better than piano. One occasion where I did instrument switching mid-song succesfully was swapping to electric upright for the bridge on a number we used to do.

[quote name='Jase' post='154315' date='Mar 10 2008, 03:15 AM'][an upright bass] Last I heard it was being used at a jam night, sorting out the men from the boys [/quote] Ah, but that's what uprights do best! Gotta love the sound, but damn it's unwieldy to schlep around.

Got the idea for the thread whilst replying to the thread where I'm selling my F-Bass... The point was that some instruments do 'functional pieces of art' thing really well, and I was reminded of some GREAT instruments I've played which ALSO were very aesthetically pleasing. I'd have to put on the first spot a Steinway and Sons grand piano I didn't get to play lots but which blew me away in the moments I had it to myself. If you ever have the chance get one for your drawing room! Absolutely fantastic pianos. The Yamaha grand (C6 or C9, can't remember which) was a very, very nice one too. (in an over-the-top build quality and tone you won't be ashamed of anywhere period) Not very modern artsy, but very pleasing! A friend's PRS Custom 24 from way back when PRS wasn't a CNC-operating, incorporated monstrosity but a small boutique and the guitars were hand made. NICE one. And such fabulous looks! Tone for weeks! Dingwall Prima Artist. Damn. NSD CR5M EUB. Lovely in a weird futuristic way. Spector NS US-series basses - lovely basses (but the upper horn is too short for me!) which Warwick has really made well-known. Err, scratch that, they don't give Ned ANY credit for the 'streamer' series. Nice blokes. No, really! Rob Allen MB-2. Now, if you don't play or don't want to schlep an upright then THIS is the bass with *the tone*. What instruments have you played that really hit your aesthetic nerve? Were they great instruments as well as aesthetically pleasing? Part man, part bunny slippers, all groovy.

Thanks for the welcome and apologies for taking so very long to return to spew useless verbiage... But Real Life(tm) obligations and all that jazz. Thanks for the appreciation about the choice of username. Clever usernames are a habit I picked up at the Internet Infidels Discussion Board or IIDB for short, which is a very polite board, so polite in fact that they lost an important *member* (yes, this would be an in-joke) and many regular contributors to rants n raves. Both boards are for discussing various topics, amongst which are science, philosophy, world events, religion both semitic and otherwise. The salient point being the abundance of very clever usernames. As to my basses for sale: I've got an F-bass BN6, a Wal Mach II 5-string, a Spector NS-XL5 and a Jack Read custom 4. The last is the least known, but think of a 4-string Spector with better ergonomics and much punchier tone due to tone chambers and sweepable frequency mid-control. Also, it's light as a feather. Will be putting up posts in the FS section. brgds

Hello one and all! I'm a long time anglophile and bass-owner currently and for both the known past and foreseeable future living in Finland, where we beat our lovers and knife our drinking buddies. Way to go! Want excitement in your life? Make friends with a finn! I've recently been forced by circumstances to retire from imposing on paying clientele my attempts at artistic expression on the bass but am looking into picking up an acoustic six-string soprano bass tuned eadgbe with which to accompany my vocal outpourings which I've no doubt will do much to improve the value of real estate in the neighbourhood. Complaints by bitter old ladies incoming in 3, 2, 1... Tied in with the forced resignation is the decision to sell the laid-off basses which now languish in storage with no gigs to anticipate. My registering here serves a dual purpose, then - entertaining myself and finding bassists who'll hopefully get much enjoyment from the basses. Need to bugger off now. Will return later, ready to type more forced attempts at emulating British humour. --Ville